Alan Kupperberg

(18 May 1953 - 16 July 2015, USA)

Blue Devil #21

Alan Kupperberg attended the High School of Art and Design in New York City, graduating in 1971. He began illustrating and scripting for Marvel Comics in 1977, working on titles such as 'Amazing Spider-Man', 'Incredible Hulk', 'Iron Man', 'Savage Sword of Conan', 'Dr Strange', 'Thor', 'Captain America', 'Beavis and Butthead', 'Transformers' and many others. He had runs on teambooks like 'The Invaders', 'The Avengers' and 'The Defenders', and also contributed to the 'What If?' title.

In 1978 he took over the 'Howard the Duck' weekly comic with Marv Wolfman. A year later he took over the newspaper comic 'The Incredible Hulk', based on the popular TV series (1978-1982) with whom it ran parallel. While the comic used the famous characters developed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, both had little to do with it. Larry Lieber wrote and drew the TV adaptation first, then followed by Rich Buckler. The characters in this specific 'Hulk' comic were also not modelled after the comics characters, but after the real-life actors on the show. Kupperberg has also worked for Marvel Custom Comics, with clients such as Campbell's Soup, the U.S. Department of Energy, Sylvan Learning Center and The Dallas Times Herald. Kupperberg is responsible for the successful one-shot comic, 'Obnoxio the Clown vs. The X-Men', for which he did the writing, illustrating and lettering.

Transformers #6

From the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, he moved over to DC, where he had a run on the successful 'Justice League of America'. He then worked on 'Warlord', 'The Fury of Firestorm', 'DC Comics Presents, 'COPS' and 'Dragonlace', and had a long run on 'The Blue Devil'. Kupperberg has done illustrations for Archie Comics, National Lampoon, Cracked Magazine, Spy and McClannahan Books. Kupperberg drew the 'Little Orphan Annie' comic strip for Tribune Media Services from 2001 to 2004.

Little Orphan Annie (2001)

In addition to illustration, Kupperberg has done design work and scripting for numerous advertising and production agencies. He worked on script development and character design for Sullivan Bluth Studios' 1990 animated feature 'Thumbelina'. From 1994, he worked with Nickelodeon/Viacom on the 'Tom Terrific' animated project. His autobiographical strips have appeared in Comic Art and in the 'Streetwise' book. Alan Kupperberg died of thymus cancer in 2015